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– he suddenly realized – would have been unfortunate, since the compartment now held another passenger. Nor – and he had been most remiss in not remarking this earlier – was this second passenger a stranger. He was, in fact, old Dr Gregory, Petticate’s physician and near neighbour. And Dr Gregory, observing that he had been observed, now spoke.
    ‘Afternoon, Petticate. Another of those heavy lunches – eh?’
    Petticate made what reply he considered judicious to this unceremonious greeting. Although his mental state was now so satisfactory, it was conceivable – he realized – that he was looking physically a little off colour. He had had a nasty shock, after all. But, of course, he couldn’t tell old Gregory about that. Indeed, he couldn’t safely tell him anything at all, since Gregory represented his first contact with the rural society amid which he lived, and whatever story was to be circulated through that society must be meditated with care. No more happy extemporization. The thing must be thought out in all its bearings. Now . Before this journey was over.
    Petticate, having thus determined, offered a single further civil remark to Dr Gregory, and then unfolded his Times – that ritual gesture whereby an English gentleman claims inviolable privacy for a season. Dr Gregory in his turn opened The British Medical Journal . The train was not due out for another ten minutes. Petticate turned to the page which Printing House Square dedicates weekly to the interests of female readers. This was not the consequence of a nostalgic thought for Sonia. He judged it the page least likely to distract his thoughts from the important task before them.
    Dispassionately put, his project involved two kinds – and, he supposed, degrees – of forgery. There was forgery as it had been pursued by James Macpherson in the laudible interest of endowing the world with an ancient Gaelic epic, or by William Ireland in the yet more commendable endeavour to add to the number of surviving plays by Shakespeare. Petticate was not very clear about the legal aspect of this part of his plans. Plenty of books published as being by X were in fact in whole or part the work of Y. But there was no doubt a point at which this sort of thing might elicit the disapprobation of the Law Officers of the Crown – and if they couldn’t get at you one way it was pretty certain that they could get at you another.
    Income tax, for instance. There was certainly a field to which he would have to give careful consideration. It would be foolish to deny that very considerable hazards awaited him. Some of them he was, no doubt, still in no position to take account of. They would bob up unexpectedly as a ready test of wit. He hadn’t, for instance, until that talk with Wedge, quite succeeded in getting into clear focus the business of the morality of popular fiction. Still, he had hold of that now, and he would write nothing to shock the sensibilities of those wives of the clergy who no doubt formed a solid block of Sonia’s readers.
    That sort of forgery was going to be plain sailing. The more technical kind – that involving the actual simulating of Sonia’s signature – was really going to crop up surprisingly seldom. When a new agreement had to be made with publishers, the signature must appear on it. But such an agreement would always contain – as for some years it had contained – a clause requiring all payments to be made to the author’s agent, Colonel Petticate, whose discharge thereof would be final. That was, in the world of publishing, common form. And it meant that once the money was in Colonel Petticate’s bank, its further destination was nobody’s business but his own – his own and that of a nonexistent lady. There was perhaps no other profession or occupation in the world – Petticate happily speculated – to the pursuit of which mere continued fleshly existence was so inessential.
    Of course there was a natural term to the